Video: Police held man on hot asphalt nearly 6 minutes
Surveillance, body-worn camera footage and photos were released Tuesday afternoon regarding the death of a man in Phoenix police custody on Aug. 4, showing he was held on the hot asphalt for nearly six minutes and sustained what appear to be burns before dying.
Minutes after three Phoenix police officers restrained 28-year-old Ramon Timothy Lopez on the searing blacktop, he was found unresponsive in the back of a police vehicle.
In a summer of growing public concern over police shootings and police violence, Lopez’s death has drawn public scrutiny. Numerous people on social media have posted wondering why he was held on pavement on such a hot day, including attorney Ben Crump, who leads the George Floyd family’s legal team and who tweeted about Lopez’s death.
Since 2017, there have been 39 incustody deaths in the county, not including Lopez, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office website.
Phoenix police officers responded to a shopping center at the corner of 51st Avenue and Indian School Road at about 10:30 a.m. Aug. 4 after a woman reported that a man, later identified as Lopez, was behaving erratically as he walked around the parking lot, Phoenix Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Mercedes Fortune said in a statement on Tuesday.
Surveillance footage shows Lopez wandering between cars. When a police vehicle arrived at the scene, Lopez ran out of the parking lot and tripped onto the sidewalk of Indian School Road.
Lopez then was seen entering a convenience store, where Fortune said he stole a drink. As he was exiting, Phoenix Police Officer Todd Stevens approached Lopez, who ran toward 51st Avenue into traffic, video shows.
After a brief pursuit, during which Lopez can be seen tossing some of his drink over his shoulder, Stevens tackled Lopez in the roadway, according to his body-worn camera footage. Stevens then got on top of Lopez and restrained him as he was joined by Officers Andrew Williams and Roszell Mosley.
Lopez can be heard yelling as he struggled with them on the blacktop. An officer at one point can also be heard saying, “Left arm broken.”
The incident report said Lopez had “super strength,” which made it “very difficult to gain control of him. As Officer Mosley was trying to control Ramon’s arm, he heard a ‘click, click’ but Ramon did not show any pain in his face.” The report says Mosley thought Ramon’s elbow may have “popped out.”
The body-cam footage then shows officers placing Lopez, who did not appear to be moving, in handcuffs and as his legs were held down on the pavement. The officers also called fire personnel during this time, according to Fortune.
Officers also put a restraint around Lopez’s ankles, which Fortune said was to prevent him from kicking. No officers were injured, according to the police report.
Finally, officers lifted Lopez and put him in the back of a patrol vehicle. By that point, Lopez had been restrained on the road for nearly six minutes, according to time stamps on the bodycam video.
The temperature at 10:30 a.m. that day was 99 degrees in Phoenix, according to the National Weather Service in Phoenix. Blacktop can reach 40 to 60 degrees hotter than the atmospheric temperature.
“With these hot sunny days, the pavement temperature can get up to 180 degrees,” Kevin Foster, head of the Arizona Burn Center, previously told The Arizona Republic for an unrelated story. “All it takes is less than a minute on pavement or blacktop and you get a bad burn. Almost all of these contact burns end up being third degree and almost all of them have to get into surgery and get a skin graft.”
As part of a public records request, Phoenix police provided The Republic photos of Lopez that show his back streaked purple and white with what look like burns in the texture of his shirt.
He also had a nearly 6-inch scrape on an arm, according to a photo.
After loading Lopez into the back of the vehicle and driving about a minute to a nearby parking lot, officers found Lopez unresponsive, body-cam video shows.
Officers attempted to resuscitate Lopez, remarking that he was “fine” and that he still had a pulse and was breathing.
Police previously said officers gave him water while he was unresponsive — video shows an officer pouring water on Lopez’s head.
He was then transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:21 a.m.
Before they moved him from the roadway, one of the officers could be heard saying into his radio transmission, “He’s on some type of 237.” This code is used to describe illegal drugs, said Fortune, which the officers believed to be the cause of Lopez’s erratic behavior. The police report does not note that any drugs were found.
Lopez’s mother Laura Gonzalez told The Republic on Wednesday that her son experienced intense anxiety and had been seeing doctors, but had not received a diagnosis for any mental disorders. “I want the truth and I want accountability,” Gonzalez said.